For the first time, landlord borrowing has beaten first time buyer borrowing in the ongoing war within the property market.
Buy to let mortgages are drastically on the rise. The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has said that compared to January last year, January 2016 saw a rise of 42 per cent of these types of mortgages.
On the other hand, those borrowing to buy their own home increased by a paltry 14 per cent year-on-year.
The amounts borrowed by these groups over the year were £3.7 billion and £3.3 billion respectively.
It is largely thought that this increase is down to the large number of Landlords buying property before a 3.0 per cent rise in Stamp Duty Land Tax comes into effect in April for those buying a second home.
Although any property sale is good, raising the demand for housing which should enable building firms to build more, there is a bill of a worry from the perspective of first time buyers, and those lacking to move house.
]The risk of landlords taking a monopoly of the market is a very real one, a risk of which we have already seen some of the effects. Many, many young people are trapped out of becoming a home owner themselves, stuck in what has been termed the ‘renting trap’; unable to save up money to buy their own house because they are constantly paying out money to landlords who are holding huge stakes of the market, while the supply of homes is simultaneously dwindled, snapped up by those same landlords.
Schemes like the Help to buy scheme help to balance the market and give first time buyers a leg up onto the property ladder, but not to a great enough degree that it has altered the face of the market to help those who are struggling.
